FEATURE : Bangladesh’s last Armenian prays for future

AFP , DHAKA

Thu, Jan 29, 2009 - Page 3

Michael Joseph Martin is reluctant to accept he will be the last in a long line of Armenians to make a major contribution to the history of Bangladesh.

Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, was once home to thousands of Armenians who grew to dominate the city’s trade and business life. But Martin, aged in his 70s, is now the only one left.

“When I die, maybe one of my three daughters will fly in from Canada to keep our presence here alive,” Martin said hopefully, speaking broken Bengali with a thick accent. “Or perhaps other Armenians will come from somewhere else.”

Martin came to Dhaka in 1942, following in the footsteps of his father who had settled in the region decades earlier.

They joined an Armenian community in Bangladesh dating back to the 16th century, but now Martin worries about who will look after the large Armenian church in the city’s old quarter.

“This is a blessed place and God won’t leave it unprotected and uncared for,” he said of the Church of Holy Resurrection, which was built in 1781 in the Armenian district.

Martin — whose full name is Mikel Housep Martirossian — looks after the church and its graveyard where 400 Armenians are buried, including his wife who died three years ago.

When their children left the country Martin became the sole remaining Armenian in Dhaka. He now lives alone in an enormous mansion in the church grounds.

“When I walk, sometimes I feel spirits moving around. These are the spirits of my ancestors. They were noble men and women, now resting in peace,” Martin said.

Armenians, persecuted by Turks and Persians, were embraced in what is now Bangladesh first by the Mughals in the 16th and 17th centuries and then by the British.

Fluent in Persian — the court language of the Mughals and the first half of the British empire in India — Armenians were commonly lawyers, merchants and officials holding senior public positions.

They were also devout Christians who built some of the most beautiful churches in the Indian subcontinent.

“Their numbers fluctuated with the prospects in trading in Dhaka,” said Muntasir Mamun, a historian at Dhaka University.

“Sometimes there were several thousand Armenians trading in the Bengal region. They were always an important community in Dhaka and dominated the country’s trading,” he said.

The decline came gradually after the British left India and the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 with Dhaka becoming the capital of East Pakistan and then of Bangladesh after it gained independence in 1971.

These days, the Armenian Church holds only occasional services, with a Catholic priest from a nearby seminary coming in to lead prayers at Christmas.

Martin said the once-busy social scene came to a halt after the last Orthodox priest left in the late 1960s, but he is determined to ensure the church’s legacy endures.

“Every Sunday was a day of festival for us. Almost every Armenian would attend the service, no matter how big he was in social position. The church was the center of all activities,” he said.

“I’ve seen bad days before, but we always bounced back. I am sure Armenians will come back here for trade and business. I will then rest in peace beside my wife,” he said.